Posts Tagged habit

Oh yes. No Monday morning 5 am taxi pick up and a delayed flight after a bad breakfast to Hamburg. No, this Monday it was the normal 7:29 train service to London. No travel abroad and lots of catching up with my UK team. This was fun! I even squeezed a civilised dinner in with our American visitor, and made it home before 10 pm. Great result and great way to start the week. After having spend the last few days trying to cure the man flu, having my parents to visit, and sorting my infected toe, this was nice. Actually, I had a really nice, productive, day.
The train home was quiet. My inbox also, given it is slowly getting to the quieter weeks of the year. This is nice, as I can focus on some not so urgent but equally important work tasks as well as catching up on some BBC iPlayer videos whilst writing my blog. Having the super sized screen, the iPad does allow for multi tasking, even if your brain doesn’t. Reading a book about the flow of things and how you best utilise your brain to be happy – the flow. I will update you on it as I read along.

The week stayed calm, or did it? Whilst the emails coming in are fewer than usual, the amount of work associated with each seem to go up. In other words, I was booked out back to back the remainder of the week, with requests coming in, needing a lot of my attention. But, and I said it before, I love what I am doing and I am GSD (getting shit done). However, coming home Tuesday night, after having had a few pints instead of coffee, I ended up with a Chinese and more wine. The weekend seemed to have started early this week, trying to cramp it all in. Despite all that, I was back to my first 10K on Wednesday morning at 5 am. Yes, that felt good. The first longer run since the Spitfire event. The first after my toe infection and the first after the man flu which slowly disappeared this week. I am getting back on it. I even fitted in a first weight session on Thursday. Winning it back. One morning at a time. Life is all about the daily routine.

Given the boys are off school and I hear about all their fun activities, I feel like I should be off too. During breakfast, the eldest sits with his huge fluffy teddy bear in the living room reading. The other one sits closer to me, colouring in. I have a rushed bite to eat, a quick kiss to say good bye, and off I go. Back long after they have been to bed. I sometimes wonder what a life would be like where you are home for 6 pm or 7 pm every night. I wouldn’t gain much time I don’t think. Being on the train from 7-8 gives me my hour of work, fun, chill out and declutter my brain time, something I don’t have to do at home. Yes, I miss bath time, but as they get older I see more of them in the evenings. The life and life balance we choose. The choices we make, to live close to London but not in London. To live close to the sea but not by the sea. The choices of houses, schools etc. I feel I made the right choices. However, as a friend of mine said this week over lunch, with Brexit and the current state of affairs, the government is harming it’s own country. Will Britain be strong enough to sustain a healthy economy in the long run. I believe, so I believe things will work out. And if not? I do not know, but maybe we move the family in a few years. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.

All of that influences our happiness. Our balances, our systems. I wrote about that in my book. It is up to us to define what we would like to do and achieve. What goals are we working towards to, or do we just go with the flow? Which values do we have and what is important to us? Where would or wouldn’t we compromise. I haven’t read a fiction book for many years. I like to spend my time constantly improving myself. I enjoy that. And that is my flow I suppose. My daily flow of things, my busy weeks balanced by chilled out weekends, shared activities with the family. The discussion around success vs. achievement. Being busy vs. productiveness. One doesn’t mean the other, and each of us has to find their own definition of it. Focus goes where energy flows. Focus on the things you want to achieve, that drive you on, your purpose. Remove noise and time wasters from the equation of your inputs, eliminate news and social media input. Strive for being better every single day.
As I prepare for some time off, rushing through things I know I won’t finish this week, and thinking the world will not end if I don’t, I reflect. Shutting down the brain and trying to relax. Letting go and recharge the batteries. The world will be the same but busier after the summer months, leading into Q4 and Christmas. What will it be like? What does the journey ahead look like?

Trusting in the power of the universe and that things will always work out, I put my head to rest. I had another almost scare this weekend, a worry that comes with age. All is good though. Thank you.

Time to reflect, recalibrate and learn from experience.
Have a great week,

Today is Fathers’ Day. And, I had the first full and good night sleep in a long time. So today was a good day!

In the The Secret Daily Teachings newsletter I came across the following:You can limit yourself by the story you have created about you. Here are some simple examples of how the story we have created about ourselves can limit us:
I am no good at math. I have never been able to dance. I am not a very good writer. I am very stubborn. I don’t sleep well. I am very moody. I struggle with my weight. My English is not good. ….
And so on, you probably find many of those examples in your daily life. It is suggested to identify those limitations and change them. You know how hard that is? Self consciousness is difficult to change, mantras, ever so small, are difficult to change. “I am getting old“, I used to say. I changed this to “I am young, I am alive.” In NLP you call that reframing or re conditioning.

Actually, little changes like self limiting believes are easy to overcome. With the help of a good friend, partner or coach, you can use a variety of techniques to change your mantras to be positive and helpful. The deeper question would be along the lines of why you had those limiting believes in the first place. Why think to be old or fat. Why would you think to not being able to lose weight? Because it is easier and gives you comfort. You wouldn’t need to face torture of finding out that you don’t get into a habit of going to the gym to lose weight, or embarrassment of giving up smoking for the 100th time. So why try in the first place?

Breaking out of your habit has to do with belief. A belief in yourself. Your will power. Your confidence about it all. You would need to get started and try to go to the gym on a regular basis over and over again until you will succeed. Starting everyday again until it might become a routine. And you will. If you really want it – you will. So start changing your life today and identify those “comfortable mantras”, because they are holding you back!

Centre Point London

Maybe an unusual start for my Sunday column but I didn’t want to write another weekly summary. Despite this week I met a few really interesting people. My cousin was over for Colin’s 4th birthday party and we had a good time preparing the party, having the party (16 kids to visit and their mums) despite the rain, and had a huge amount of Indian food on Wednesday night to wind down. Good times, a mini holiday really. It is good to see that my cousin becomes friends with my wife and the family growing closer together, also of course my cousin being close to the kids. And even I enjoyed the party a bit yet I was very exhausted afterwards. Staying on top of all those kids, playing all over the place, is a real challenge.

But as of the intro challenges are there to be conquered. I identify them weekly and make sure I work on them. I enjoy personal development challenges as they make me grow, both as a person and in terms of portfolio for coaching and/or managing others. But you probably heard that in my first video blog on Friday.

I mentioned before that job hunting is a full time job. And it is. Travelling back and forth to them, following up, learning for it, improving for next time and eliminating job opportunities you wouldn’t have looked at if you were still in employment. All of that whilst having the nagging voice in your head that you need to find a job, well knowing you actually aren’t in a rush. The world is what you make of it, how you play it, what you believe. What are the limitations and what are the things you do really well? Your gifts. And interesting enough there are opportunities that stick out and are “potentials”. Let’s see what the next few weeks bring.

As a former manager once said, I’d rather spend money on Volker making him better in what he does than improving areas he isn’t as good in. I know what he meant. This week I was asked to explain how cookies sync online between exchanges, bidders, publishers and ad servers. I knew it more or less but to be honest, this is not my main area of expertise. I can explain the whole ecosystem but the technical details aren’t for me. I could explain most of them to someone, and I could learn it very quickly, but I won’t take a job in ad operations 😉 However, I know it well enough to explain it to someone, and selling ad operations, I could do. Technical enough for that. And what I realise is that it seems to be the most important skill in my area: knowing of technology, know how it works and being able to explain it to others. Not knowing what the algorithm or black box underneath really is though. And, to be honest, there are too many people out there, that wouldn’t even understand some of the basics. And they are in positions that are much higher than mine. Never mind ;-(

That’s really it before I go on a rant. A good week overall. Good catch ups and great conversations. Great family time and a four year old that was so excited to have his birthday, it was fantastic. Life is good. Excitement on children’s faces and them stuffing their face with sausages and cake, dancing in the living room. That is what I will remember mostly from this week. I will forget about my small hangover, the interviews and discussions. I remember the love, the sharing and the fun those little people had. I was glad to be part of it.

And I will remember the movie I watched on Saturday night: YOU GOTTA DREAM, YOU GOTTA PROTECT IT. You wanna get something, you go and get it. Period. (Good mantras btw.)

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Volker Ballueder

A note from Volker

I write this blog as a personal blog, so all opinions are my own.

Further, I published two productivity books, the latest in 2017 on productivity and life systems.

I am a dedicated family man and a passionate “veteran” of adtech and programmatic technology as well as artificial intelligence (AI); a true advocate of ‘martech’ and fan of Apple, I like to blog about anything related to my family, digital marketing, personal life, coaching, Buddhism, wine, the commute, and much more.

Originally from Germany, I call Britain my home for over 15 years! Despite Brexit, I don’t plan to change this anytime soon, as a matter of fact I now hold the British citizenship. I am very much settled in the South Downs with commuting distance to London.

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